


Arrowhead

by whiteraven1606



Series: Arrows in Flight [7]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 21:10:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiteraven1606/pseuds/whiteraven1606
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thea finds what is in the Verdant's basement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arrowhead

**Author's Note:**

> Eventually I will get around to Oliver and his thoughts on the whole thing with Laurel. Thea elbowed her way into this and Oliver wanted to sleep.

****

John Diggle stood up and started to get his phone to try to call Carly when he stopped short. "Shit."

Felicity frowned at him. "What?"

John turned back and leaned over Oliver. "He stabbed himself with an arrow to get Malcolm."

Felicity hurried over and lightly smacked him on the shoulder. "And you let me drug him!"

John rolled his eyes. "Let. Right." He pointed at the cabinet with the medical supplies. "Get the kit out." John eyed Oliver while he tried to decide how best to treat Oliver's wound without making the man come awake in a panic.

Felicity came back with the medical kit in her arms. "Uhm. Are we going to try to wake him up?"

"No." John pushed Oliver's vest out of the way and grimaced at the sluggishly bleeding wound. "Get me a pair of gloves out."

Felicity held out gloves and gamely followed all of John's orders. She gulped as John injected Oliver with a topical numbing agent as she held the vest out of John's way. "He'll be alright, right?"

"Yes." John carefully stitched the wound closed on Oliver's back. "Let him roll onto his back."

Felicity bit her lip as Oliver moaned as his back touched the cot. "Why didn't he say anything? I mean, I know he doesn't about any injuries, but if he was still bleeding and all..."

John worked on the entry wound as Felicity watched. "This time it was probably shock. You scared him to get him back here."

"Oh, right." Felicity sat down at Oliver's feet as John stripped off his gloves. "He just..." She motioned to her chest like she was stabbing herself with an invisible arrow.

John settled into one of the rolling chairs as he nodded. "He knew what he was doing to. Didn't hit anything major in himself and got Malcolm near the top of his heart."

Felicity moved back over to her computers. "Okay, that's just one more thing I need to work on."

John frowned after her and then went to make that call to Carly.

****

Oliver sat down next to Diggle as people trickled into the club looking for a roof over their heads for the night. "Do you think there'll be a lot more dead?"

Diggle looked up from the list he was keeping of the people that they were housing to help with finding people that other people were missing. "The aerial pictures on the news make it look fairly bad."

Oliver nodded. "I'm surprised we haven't gotten more police trying to arrest me or Thea."

Diggle raised an eyebrow. "Are you expecting that?"

"Maybe." Oliver frowned as Thea headed for them. "I'm going to go check on Felicity."

****

John mentally rolled his eyes as Thea frowned at Oliver's retreating back. "He's being a bit of a coward."

Thea shook her head. "No. He's just protecting himself. I say the wrong thing a lot, now."

John caught Thea's arm as she started to stand up. "If I can suggest something. Try treating him as though he was at war for those five years. That he was a POW."

She sank back onto the barstool. "What do you mean?"

"I've seen him hyper-vigilant. He doesn't trust most food. People touching him is difficult for him. That all sounds like a returning soldier with issues."

Thea blinked and turned her head to look the direction Oliver had gone. "You know what those scars are from, don't you?"

John made himself not tense up. "Not all of them."

Thea turned back towards John. "I know I like to act like school doesn't matter, but I did pay attention the day my math teacher, Mr. C, talked about being a veteran. He was in Vietnam."

John blinked. "Okay?"

"He said that helping people helped him."

"It does for a lot of people."

Thea nodded. "Okay." She stood and peeked John on the cheek. "Thanks a lot." She smiled at his surprise. "Not just for body guarding him, but for being willing to listen."

****

John held out a bottle of water to Oliver. "Your sister is a little scary."

Oliver smirked at him and drank the water before sitting down on the floor near Felicity. "What do you mean?"

"Yeah, who does someone as small as Thea scare _you_ , Diggle?"

John sighed. "She has the non-caring mask down pat and then she pulls the I-just-want-to-help card out of nowhere. Little scary."

Oliver huffed and leaned against the leg of Felicity's computer table. "She keeps trying to get me to tell her what happened on the island."

Felicity and John exchanged looks over Oliver's head.

"Would that be a bad thing?" Felicity turned back towards her computer. "Right. Sorry. Forget I asked anything."

Oliver banged his head lightly back into the table leg. "I'm not going to yell at you for asking, Felicity."

"You might." Felicity half-turned back. "You get all growly." She made claw-hands and growled.

John bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

Oliver frowned as he rolled his eyes. "Only when I've been unwillingly drugged."

Felicity stuck her tongue out at him. "You are never going to let me live that down are you?"

"It's only been twenty hours or so."

John nudged Oliver's foot with his toe. "Which means you should get some more sleep."

Oliver grimaced. "I'm fine."

Felicity stood up and came over to him. "Up. Now."

Oliver stared up at her. "What?"

"Up." Felicity grabbed Oliver's uninjured shoulder and started to tug. "You need sleep. No hallucinations from going without sleep too long for you. Up."

Oliver snorted and then pushed himself to his feet and let Felicity drag him over to the cot. "I'm perfectly capable of going to sleep Felicity."

"Uh, huh. Sure. Listen, John will guard you and I'll keep looking for ways to pin this mostly on Malcolm and see if I can find something concrete that your Mom was being blackmailed, alright? Sleep for you."

Oliver stifled a yawn as he sat down on the cot. "I'm...fine."

John helped spread a blanket across Oliver. "You keep saying that and I don't think it means what you think it means."

Oliver smiled sleepily at him before closing his eyes. "Oh, shut up."

John grinned and tucked the blanket under Oliver's arms so he would be less likely to feel trapped. "Sleep, Boss."

Oliver's eyelids flickers. "Hmm."

****

Thea slinked down the stairs and stared across the big room. There was a woman working at a computer and Diggle was sitting behind her a little watching her work. Ollie was along the nearby wall on a cot, asleep.

Thea blinked at the sight of the green arrows on the table nearest the stairs. She covered her mouth with her hand to make sure she didn't make too much noise. The arrowhead he'd given her when he'd first got back...Thea clutched it through the fabric of her purse.

Diggle turned his head and caught sight of her.

Thea sat down on the stair she was on, because she knew she couldn't outrun her brother's bodyguard. "Shit."

The woman whirled around and her eyes went impossibly wide. "Ohhh. That's not good." She turned back to the computer. "I didn't get the breech alarm..."

Thea clutched the arrowhead tighter. "I put in the code Ollie used to use...Before."

Diggle moved closer. "Thea?"

Thea bit her lips and nodded to the arrows. "He...he's the Hood, isn't he?"

Diggle glanced at Ollie, tucked up on the little cot. "He...he'd want to tell you himself."

Thea snorted. "Like he didn't have time...No, no." She took a calming breathe like her counselors were always telling her to do. "Okay. The Hood attacked Mom. She shot...Oh." Thea winched as she realized that Mom had nearly killed Ollie.

Diggle came closer and looked up at her from the foot of the stairs. "You want to come sit down?"

Thea tucked her hair behind her ears. "I...don't know." She stared at Ollie. "He's willing to go out and do that...nearly die. And for what?"

Diggle held his hand out to her. "We're trying to let him sleep because he hasn't in the rush to try to stop the Undertaking. Come sit and we'll try to explain, alright?"

Thea thought of Roy asleep in a booth upstairs and nodded. "I'm not going to tell on him." She grabbed Diggle's hand as she came down the stairs. "I won't."

Diggle nodded. "That helps. Tommy threatened him with that at least once."

Thea dropped Diggle's hand. "Tommy knew?"

"Oliver had to tell him or shoot him. It was a thing." The woman stood as they approached. "I'm Felicity."

Thea tried to smile and it felt like she failed. "I'm Thea. Ollie's sister."

She nodded. "He worries about you." She winched and scratched at her head. "Uhm, I mean, he tells me how he messes up trying to talk to you." She made a face. "That wasn't any better, was it?"

Thea shook her head. "No, not a lot." She sat down and looked at Felicity's computer screens. "Wow. Is that the Glades?"

Felicity nodded. "The latest ariel pictures from this afternoon when the smoke cleared off enough to take them."

Thea stared. "You were trying to stop it?"

Diggle put a cup of tea down beside her. "Oliver wasn't certain who all was involved until recently when he decided that Mrs. Queen knew something."

Thea frowned. "Wait...I thought that the Hood had kidnapped Mom and Ollie. He had bruises and everything..." She looked at Diggle. "Did he talk you into playing him?"

Diggle's eyebrows went up. "Well, the drugs haven't killed all your brain cells, have they?"

Thea snorted. "Someone really ought to do a hair thingy on me. Other than my birthday, which sort of sucked, I've been pretending drugs more than not. Drinking, though. I'll totally own that."

Diggle shook his head. "Thea..."

Thea leaned back in her chair and picked up the tea. "Look, don't lecture me. The only person in my family I could truly stand disappears and comes back five years later with this shell or mask. He isn't the same. I'm not the same. I can't _talk_ to him. Hugs are so much rarer from him now." Thea forced herself to stop. "I don't know how to handle him."

Felicity tucked one of her legs up under herself. "You could ask him for hugs."

"What?"

"When you need a hug or want one. Just ask him if you can have a hug."

Thea looked at Ollie and then back to Felicity. "He won't go for that."

****

Oliver held himself still as he came awake to Thea's voice. He was on the cot in the Verdant's basement so she shouldn't...Oliver considered just banging his head into the wall. Another person that knew, lovely.

He lay staring at the wall as he listened to them talk. He hadn't realized she'd even want a hug from him without extreme emotional provocation. He thought she mostly hated him lately.

****


End file.
